Council HQ plan through scrutiny

Published:16:00Thursday 04 June 2015

Plans to allocate more than £33million to move County Hall to Ashington have scraped through scrutiny after a councillor was barred from asking a question.

Recommendations to approve the spend and relocate the county council’s headquarters from Morpeth were backed by three votes to two at the authority’s economic growth and corporate services scrutiny committee on Tuesday.

But while the Labour leadership was allowed ample time to set out the case for the move, Lib Dem Andrew Tebbutt and Conservative Glen Sanderson were warned to be brief in any comments or questions.

When Coun Sanderson had queried the budget, he was told by acting chairman Lynne Grimshaw that no further questions or comments could be made due to the meeting’s long agenda.